Destroying a city with electric tornadoes: Infamous 2 preview

While the new powers in the PS3 exclusive Infamous 2 let players wreak some …

When we first checked in with Infamous 2 protagonist Cole back at E3, he was barely recognizable, sporting a brand new look that was quite different from the character introduced in the original Infamous. He has been retooled once again, however, and our latest hands-on time demo with the game revealed a Cole who was sporting the shaved head, rough beard look that is just so uncommon in the gaming world. But aside from getting a look at the main character's makeover, the demo also gave us a chance to play around with some of the new abilities set to be introduced in the sequel. Though things still felt a little rough around the edges, Infamous 2 is a game that will let you wreak some real havoc if you want.

There was little set-up to the demo; we were simply thrust into a battle sequence with one goal in mind: destroy all the swamp monsters. Whereas the first game had us fighting gang members who liked to wear trash bags, Infamous 2 put us up against foes that look like they were ripped straight from a Guillermo del Toro film, with blade-like limbs and twisted, vicious-looking faces. This scene provided the opportunity to test out Cole's new melee weapon, which was disappointingly simplistic. Simply mashing one button resulted in a series of impressive-looking attacks that easily cleared away all of the enemies. If the melee combat ends up being a large part of the game, let's hope that it gets a little deeper as you progress.

This was followed by one of the chase sequences that were so common in the first game. There was a limo parked a few dozen feet from Cole, and he needed to get on top of it. Of course, when the limo starts driving away, this is easier said than done. The first Infamous allowed Cole to slide along power wires located throughout the city, and the sequel does the same. But you can also slide across certain points on the sides of buildings, making following moving objects much faster and easier. In the demo, any point that could be slid across was lit up, providing a clear path of the fastest route, much like in Enslaved.

Infamous 2

Once Cole reached the limo, he was almost immediately clipped in the head by a helicopter. And this is where things got interesting. There's a new ability in the game called an ionic storm—essentially, a giant electric tornado. It's able to cause some massive destruction, and it was quite effective at taking a pesky helicopter out of the sky. Then, for no apparent reason, the game prompted me to start wreaking as much chaos as possible by throwing out tornadoes. Not only would pedestrians scatter and cars fly through the air, but the ionic storm also caused parts of buildings to come falling down with a satisfying crash.

Though it's still a work in progress, with an expected release sometime next year, it should still be noted that Infamous 2 looked a little rough. The game ran smoothly, even with a lot of chaos going on, but the actual characters and environments were somewhat jagged, and on more than one occasion I managed to run through a wall or other object. These issues will likely be ironed out in the final version, however.

From the looks of it, Infamous 2 is keeping both the good and bad aspects of the original. The additional superpowers are both fun and satisfying, while the combat remains as repetitive as ever. And that was after only a brief demo. If it doesn't get any deeper than simple button mashing, the combat could very well take away from the rest of the game, which is looking great.

Andrew, did you just refer to the combat in Infamous as repetitive? The game where you could choose two completely different sets of powers and fight your enemies with parkour-style acrobatics?

Are you kidding? The game was only repetitive if you had no imagination or if you were completely useless at it.

You're also reviewing a demo that was freely playable at PAX almost a month late? Suggesting that you've got any idea of what the combat is going to be like this time around (where they've added another element to play with–ice– and they've given Cole a weapon) from the brief time you had with the demo... well, it's practically irresponsible.

I'm really disappointed here. It felt like you had to generate some controversy for hits; in that you've done well. In actually capturing anything useful for gamers looking for information on the game you've failed.

For those actually interested in the game: the demo's purpose was to walk you through the powers available to Cole in the next game. I believe that it asks you to go a little nuts with the ionic tornado to show you an end-game power, and to show you the kind of carnage you can wreak should you choose; it also did a great job of showing off the engine's capabilities when it comes to dealing with multiple high speed elements moving chaotically.

The new weapon was an interesting element, adding a timed-combat approach like Batman: AA. In addition, the hover/flight controls felt more precise as I think they've added a little magnetic snapping to landings.

If you liked the first game (and who didn't? Well, Andrew apparently) I think you'll find that inFamous 2 has a lot of promise.

I enjoyed the first one all the way through so if it is mostly more of the same I am not going to complain. I am glad however that they fixed Cole's model, I liked uncharted, but making Cole look like Nathan would have just been stupid.

I don't think that it matters that much if the melee feels like buttonmashing, I spent most of my playthroughs of the first game killing people from a distance with my awesome bolts, grenades, shockwaves, missiles and lightning storms - even if I was up close I'd most likely shockwave them off the roof or stick a grenade on them.

The sticky shock grenades from the first game were indeed quite satisfying. It allowed for some interesting tactics, and all around all of Cole's powers seemed well-balanced (with static hover seeming to me to be the most essential despite not being a direct combat power). I hope this ionic storm power doesn't throw the balance off. It might be satisfying to lay down some hell on earth at certain unlocked points in the game but if you can just go around leveling entire blocks and sapping a generator to recharge to do it all again it will become more boring the melee button mashing.

How is combat not repetitive? You can only play as hero or renegade on a given playthrough, and there are only a few attacks available to you - melee, basic shock, grenade, 'force push', and the thunderdrop if you can manage to land on a group of enemies (which is almost impossible without killing civilians).

Another annoyance is that for a game where you have to do a lot of climbing, no one put in enough thought to give you any way of scaling a building other than mashing X and waiting 30 seconds for your character to bunnyhop to the top of a building.

The first game is also the ugliest game I've seen on the PS3 in every possible way. If they don't at least wise up and use MSAA or MLAA like the other Sony-owned studios, this will just be a rent for me.

Isn't this article a little late? And gameplay wise I reckon sucker punch had combat - close quarters or otherwise - nailed down last time. Fighting enemies was very satisfying for me. Graphics weren't bad but leave a bit to be desired - the game looked great at times, but blotchy and repetitive at others, just needs more consistency on this, and better Anti aliasing, draw distance. Looks like a great followup to a great game.I'm gonna go play some InFamous now

This scene provided the opportunity to test out Cole's new melee weapon, which was disappointingly simplistic. Simply mashing one button resulted in a series of impressive-looking attacks that easily cleared away all of the enemies. If the melee combat ends up being a large part of the game, let's hope that it gets a little deeper as you progress.

I don't think that it matters that much if the melee feels like buttonmashing, I spent most of my playthroughs of the first game killing people from a distance with my awesome bolts, grenades, shockwaves, missiles and lightning storms - even if I was up close I'd most likely shockwave them off the roof or stick a grenade on them.

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And perhaps the combat was a bit repetitive, but every battle was also very satisfying with the amount of damage one could wreak on the enemies. What really kept me playing was the story (which no one here seems to mention as a selling point), and the final twist was really awesome. I'm looking forward to inFamous 2, hoping that the writers managed to develop the storyline even further.

Loved the first game and if the combat is more of the same then that's fine by me.

As grahamwilliams already said, the combat in inFamous is entirely a product of the player's ingenuity and imagination. In the same vein, you could go through any Ratchet and Clank game using only three or four of the twenty odd weapons in each game but it'd be pretty dull and repetitive.

I don't know, the combat wasn't bad, it definitely had its moments, but it did get fairly repetitive. The game was drab, although the graphics looked pretty decent overall. The story was nice, but I gotta say, I'm extremely disappointed with the alternate paths. My friend and I played the game through almost equally, with one being evila nd oen being good. The story didn't change at all really, it was fairly ridiculous. I'd hate to have thought that I might make some sort of difference by playing good, and then find out I'd wasted hours just to find out the story wasn't changed at all. I also thought it was kind of funny that if you're evil you get a really cool graphical improvement near the end, but as a good player you don't get squat.

I played this game through and had a love/hate relationship with it. It was good but it really got on my nerves at times. A friend of mine brought over Prototype soon after I beat this and the difference was night and day. The combat was fun and dynamic, and all the annoying restrictions from Infamous were thrown away. I think it's probably a matter of preference though, I can understand how others would enjoy Infamous more.

The first game is also the ugliest game I've seen on the PS3 in every possible way. If they don't at least wise up and use MSAA or MLAA like the other Sony-owned studios, this will just be a rent for me.

It were a open-world game wich tend to make graphics worse, it's much harder to polish the graphics - when they don't know where the player will be located, especially for a small studio like Sucker Punch, who were one of the smallest SCEA-studios, when they made the first game.Next-gen studios tend to be atleast double or three times their size. :-/However, they've had recruitment posts on industry-sites ever since Infamous tough, so I don't think that's the case anymore. - This game also looks much better graphically - judging from the videos, and there also there seems to be much more destructive enviroments, however I have no clue what type of AA they use, and don't really worry abvout it either, since it looks great in the videos I've seen. I don't agree that the first game were ugly tough, especially when it's open world competition in that time-frame were Prototype and Red Faction. It's not an Asassin's Creed, or Red Dead Redemption.. But those studios are like a million people.I tought the first game were awesome game, so I naturally won't think the sequel is any kind of rental at all.. After completing Infamous, I were high on gaming and wanted more. I went straight to the video-game store intent to buy Prototype, the other openworld superhero-game, wich the 360 people said were so great. However I came out of the shop with Red Faction, wich also were fun.But it didn't grab me the same as Infamous... So I never got around to play Prototype.